Christian Sinding

Christian Sinding

Christian August Sinding (born January 11, 1856 in Kongsberg , † December 3, 1941 in Oslo ) was a Norwegian composer .

Sinding first studied music in Oslo before moving to Germany. There he studied with Salomon Jadassohn at the Leipzig Conservatory . He spent most of his life in Germany but received regular financial support from Norway. In 1920 and 1921 he stayed in the United States and taught composition at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York.

Since he composed many lyrical piano works and around 250 songs , many saw him as Edvard Grieg's successor . One of his best-known works is Spring Rush from 1896. Among his other compositions, which are rarely played today, there are four symphonies , three violin concertos , a piano concerto , chamber music and the opera Der Heilige Berg from 1914.

Life

Christian August Sinding was born on January 11, 1856 in Kongsberg, a small town about 70 kilometers west of Oslo (then still Kristiania), the son of the mining engineer Mathias Wilhelm Sinding and his wife Maria Cecilie, who was interested in art. However, he spent his early childhood in Lillehammer.

In 1860 his father died and the family moved to Oslo. The two older brothers Otto and Stephan initially embarked on a legal career before successfully turning to painting, writing and sculpture. Christian Sinding, on the other hand, showed a special musical talent. In 1867 he entered the venerable cathedral school. Five years later, however, his performance at school was so bad that an uncle wanted him to learn the shoemaker's trade. Sinding prevailed insofar as he started an apprenticeship - not too unfamiliar with the subject - in the piano factory of the Hals brothers. He received regular and thorough instruction on various instruments.

In 1874 he turned to the Leipzig Conservatory , which at that time was the first address for particularly good music studies. After Salomon Jadassohn wrote in his annual report card in 1877 that he had little musical talent, Sinding interrupted his studies and played in an orchestra in Oslo under the direction of Grieg and Johan Svendsen . During this time, Sinding began to be more and more interested in composing. In 1879 he returned to Leipzig and took composition lessons with Carl Reinecke . In the same year a violin sonata was performed in Leipzig and a sonata movement for piano in Oslo. He later destroyed these, as well as most of the early compositions.

A state scholarship enabled Sinding to spend an extended period in Munich in 1884. There he got to know Richard Wagner's musical world , which later influenced his compositions. During this time, the first valid compositions were created, which were also published in print.

On December 19, 1885, a concert took place in Oslo that helped Sinding to achieve a breakthrough, at least in Scandinavia. The program included a string quartet in A major (destroyed), the old wise men, later published as op. 1, based on poems by Gottfried Keller, and the piano quintet in E minor, op. 5.

In the following year Sinding stayed in Leipzig again and made artistic contacts. He spent nearly forty years in Central Europe until his death. But he kept coming back to Norway. A year later he began work on Symphony No. 1 in D minor, Op. 21. In 1888, Sinding had brilliant success with his piano quintet at the first Nordic Music Festival in Copenhagen. He commented on this in a letter to Frederick Delius as follows (originally in German):

“My Kvintet was played excellently and I suddenly became a bit of a genius. And people who used to sneer at me now licked my ass with great appetite. I will kick them when I have the opportunity to thank them. "

After the Leipzig premiere of the piano quintet on January 19, 1889, a dispute arose among the critics of two musical newspapers, which helped Sinding to achieve a national breakthrough. The Piano Concerto in D flat major op. 6 was premiered in Oslo on November 2nd.

In 1890, the second version of Symphony No. 1 op. 21 was performed in Oslo. He did not hand over the first draft. On January 4, 1894, the third version of the symphony was heard in Dresden. In 1896 the Six Pieces for Pianoforte Op. 32 appeared in print, No. 3 of which, “Spring Rush”, became extremely popular in a very short time and was also distributed in countless arrangements.

In 1898 Sinding completed his violin concerto in London. On March 22, 1907, Felix Weingartner conducted the world premiere of Symphony No. 2 in D major op. 83 in Berlin. In 1909, Sinding was elected a member of the Prussian Academy of the Arts .

After Sinding had continuously received a work grant from the Norwegian state since about 1880, he was awarded an "artist's fee" in 1910 to secure his livelihood.

In 1912, after three years, Sinding completed work on his only opera “Der Heilige Berg” op. 111, which premiered on April 17, 1914.

In recognition of his creative work, Sinding has received an annual honorary salary of 6000 crowns from the Norwegian state since his 65th birthday. In 1921 he took over a professorship for composition at the Eastman School of Music in the USA, but gave up this position again the following year. The last compositions were six more songs on Norwegian texts in 1935. On January 13, 1936, Harald Heide conducted the world premiere of Symphony No. 4 "Frost und Frühling" op. 129 in Bergen.

In 1941, two months before his death, it was reported that the extremely popular composer had joined the Norwegian Nazi party Nasjonal Samling - a very strange circumstance since he had suffered from severe senile dementia for years . The result was that he became a non-person in his home country for a long time .

Christian Sinding died on December 3, 1941 at the age of 85.

Works

• Opera
  • Der Heilige Berg op. 111 (comp. 1910–1912, first performed 1914)
• Chamber music
  • Works for violin and piano
    • Sonata in G major (1879)
    • Romance in E minor op.9 (1886)
    • Suite in the old style op.10 (1889)
    • Suite in F major op.14 (1891)
    • Sonata in C major op.12 (1894)
    • Sonata in E major op.27 (1895)
    • Romance in E minor op. 30 (1896)
    • 4 morceaux op.43 (1898)
    • Scènes de la vie in G major op.51 (1900)
    • 4 pieces op.61 (?)
    • Sonata in F major op.73 (1905)
    • Cantus doloris , Variations op.78 (1906)
    • 2 romances in F major, D major op.79 (1906)
    • 4 pieces op.81 (?)
    • 3 pieces op.89 (1908)
    • Suite in G minor, Op. 96 (1909)
    • Old Style Sonata in D minor, Op. 99 (1909)
    • 3 elegiac pieces op.106 (1911)
    • 3 preludes op.112 (1913)
    • 3 Capricci op.114 (1913)
  • Works for other instrumentations
    • Piano quartet (1882)
    • String Quartet (1884)
    • Piano quintet in E minor, Op. 5 (1882–84)
    • Piano trio in D major op.23 (1893)
    • Piano trio in A minor op.64a (1902)
    • Serenade for 2 violins and piano in G major op.56 (1903)
    • 6 pieces for violoncello and piano op.66 (1903)
    • String Quartet in A minor op.70 (1904)
    • 8 pieces for piano four hands op.71
    • Piano trio in C major op.87 (1908)
    • Serenade for 2 violins and piano in A major op.92 (1909)
    • Nordic ballad for violoncello and piano op.105 (1911)
    • Suite for solo violin in D minor op.123 (1919)

• Symphonies
  • Symphony No. 1 in D minor, Op. 21 (1894)
  • Symphony No. 2 in D major, op.83 (1907)
  • Symphony No. 3 in F major op.121 (1920)
  • Symphony No. 4 "Winter and Spring" op. 129 (1936)

• Violin concerts
  • Violin Concerto No. 1 in A major op.45 (1898)
  • Violin Concerto No. 2 in D major, Op. 60 (1901)
  • Violin Concerto No. 3 in A minor, Op. 119 (1917)

literature

• Sigfrid Karg-Elert: Christian Sinding. Biography and explanation of his works. Die Musik-Woche, 36 and 37 (1903), pp. 346-348 and 359-361.

Documents

Letters from Christian Sinding from 1888 to 1941 are in the holdings of the Leipzig music publisher C. F. Peters in the Leipzig State Archives .

Trivia

Sindings Frühlingsrauschen , a bestseller in the publishing program, was the reason for a test case for his publishing rights between Max Hinrichsen, the son and heir of the publisher Henri Hinrichsen , and the British music publisher Novello . The British High Court of Justice ruled in Novello and Company Limited v. Hinrichsen Edition Limited and Another that Max Hinrichsen was entitled to the publishing rights.

Web links

Commons : Christian Sinding  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Works by and about Christian Sinding in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Christian Sinding  in the German Digital Library
• Sheet music and audio files by Christian Sinding in the International Music Score Library Project

Individual evidence

1. ^ Sophie Fetthauer: Music publishers in the "Third Reich" and in exile. (= Music in the “Third Reich” and in Exile 10), Hamburg: von Bockel 2004, plus diss. Phil. Hamburg 2002 (2nd edition 2007), p. 315